Below Ground
by Shauds02
Summary: Clark is flying over Gotham when he hears something. Something coming from the grave of his best friend's son. Something that sounds like a child screaming.


Screaming.

Clark hated flying by Gotham City. He hated hearing what had become of his best friend. The poof that, rather than being the symbol of justice, a saviour the weakest, most vulnerable inhabitants of the city looked to, he'd become something more of a nightmare. Clark heard the whispers that slipped out through the crevices, the fear, from people who'd never had cause to fear before, that followed after a mention of the Batman.

There were other screams too, on some rare early mornings; screams for Robin, and Jason, begging and heart wrenching, screams of the kind Clark had never thought he'd ever hear from his best friend. Alone, but refusing comfort, pushing everything and everyone that wasn't his mission away, and for all his power, there was nothing Clark could do.

So Clark tried not to fly over Gotham, and when he had to, he tried not to listen, to push aside anything hedidhear by making his thoughts louder than anything else.

Only, this time, it wasn't working, the screams were too familiar, begging, hoarse and heart wrenching, interspersed with, wet, painful sounding sobs. Too much to block out, but this time, they weren't screaming for Jason, they weren't making promises, or begging for a son. This time, the screams were only one world, garbled and barely decipherable, even to Clark, in a young voice too impossible to be anything other than Clark's morbid thoughts growing too loud and too terrible.

His flight came to an abrupt pause over - still more morbidly - the cemetery, ears straining for the chance he'd hear it again. Rain striking the ground, sobbing beneath that, scratching, desperate, hurried breaths. Clark felt his blood rush from his body and he looked down, saw exactly where he was. The gravestone, flecked with mud from the raindrops, the soil, undisturbed and still covered by a layer of grass. Thee sounds that were coming frombeneaththat soil.

He lowered himself down, until his feet were just an inch from touching the ground. It wasn't possible, it just wasn't...

"BRUCE!"

It was one of the worst sounds Clark had ever heard, tearing through him like something supernatural. He didn't bother scanning the ground with his x-ray vision before his arms were buried elbow deep in the soil and he was tearing out huge chunks of the ground to reach the coffin beneath. The sobbing and the screaming grew louder, more distinct. It took Clark barely two seconds to reach the thick wood of the casket. It gave away easily, and Clark tossed it aside before he was forced to look at the bloody, splintered mess the inner side had become.

"Bru..." The boy's fingers, bloody and stripped of their nails still clawed at the air, whispered pleas and choked out sobs shaking a body too small to be that broken. Tears streamed down a face that was only barely recognizable through the heavy bruising.

Numb, Clark scanned the fractured and broken bones, the collapsed lungs, then making note of where they are, gave into the initial impulse to bend down and carefully lift the boy up and out of the splinters and the dirt that had spilled into the coffin before hand. It made bile rise up to hit the back of Clark's throat, then the boy whimpered at the added pain Clark had caused by moving him the only thing that kept the Man of Steel from doubling over was the knowledge that doing so would result in more of the same.

"Jason." Clark whispered, and oh God, this was Jason. So small and this, this was what the Joker had done, what had caused Bruce to almost do what he'd tried to do on that helicopter. This child was... the coffin stood torn open, the angel standing above in impassive despite the storm raging all around them, soaking and filling the space where Jason had been with water, this child was Jason.

Disbelieving, he scanned the area for miles around, searching for... for something that explained it. Pulse, heartbeat, the rushing of blood through veins, all too fast but steady and real as the grit of the dirt he felt under his nails and pressing up against his neck where the boys head was pressing against him.

"Jason." Clark repeated, his chest clenching when the only reply he got was more whispered pleading for Bruce.

Across Gotham, as though in answer, he heard a similar string of pleas, then a scream and the gasping for breath of a man who'd been woken from a nightmare and realized it hadn't ended. Not yet. It would only taken Clark a moment to reach the manor. But broken bones and collapsed lungs wouldn't survive that kind of acceleration, or even the time it would take to convince Bruce this wasn't another nightmare.

Jason sucked in a raspy breath that rattled his lungs too much and Clark's attention was snapped from the grieving man to the child. A Doctor. To survive, Jason needed medical help more than he needed anything else. Clark knew there was one Bruce went to for all of his 'work' related injuries, but he wasn't sure where it was, and he wasn't about to waste time looking.

"You'll see him soon." Clark said, shifting the weight of the body in his arms, party curling around Jason so he could protect the boy from further pain from the punishing storm as he began flying carefully in the direction opposite the manor, for the nearest hospital Clark could spot. "You'll be just fine Jason, just fine."

Clark didn't know if the reassurances were for Jason, or himself, but though the pleading didn't stop until Jason had been sedated and Clark sped off to find Bruce, he'd scarcely been more certain of anything in his life than that they were the truth.


End file.
